


artless seduction

by abeaufortinnewyork



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, I feel very comfortable locating this soundly in canonverse, Oh also, This Is STUPID, and ben is just dumb, and very much like what would have happened had ben turned post-throne room, because this kind of dumb space virgin behavior feels oh so true to canon, but fun?, phallic symbols abound, rey is thirsty but awkward, thank you george lucas for making the lightsaber even more phallic than a regular sword
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-03-29 13:50:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13928418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abeaufortinnewyork/pseuds/abeaufortinnewyork
Summary: Six months after Ben Solo's turn, Rey remains deeply frustrated by his lack of romantic advances. With a little help from her friends, who are tired of watching two dumb space virgins dance around the inevitable, she decides to take matters into her own hands.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> please enjoy... um... whatever this is.

“I just don’t get it.”

Rey looks up from her dinner. “Don’t get what?”

“I mean, he was like… a… I dunno, a Sith lord or whatever,” Finn says, eyeing him from across the cafeteria. Rey follows his gaze to where Ben sits, shoulders slumped, with his mother and Vice Admiral Holdo. Leia glares at her son, and chastened, he straightens his back.   

“He wasn’t a Sith,” Rey corrects absentmindedly, fixing her gaze a beat too long on the broad planes of Ben’s shoulders. 

“Whatever. Same difference. Point is, he was a really powerful and scary guy. And now he can’t even make a move on a girl?”

“Pathetic, if you ask me,” Poe mumbles, not entirely good-naturedly. It’s been six months since Rey returned from the _Supremacy_ with Ben Solo in tow, and Poe has been the most reluctant to accept the redeemed son of General Organa, to whom — and perhaps, Rey reflects often, this is the reason for his reluctance — he has been obliged to cede the title of best pilot in the Resistance.

“A little pathetic,” Finn admits. 

Rey huffs out a sigh, disgruntled and discouraged. “I don’t even know if he feels that way about me. I don’t know if he thinks… I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

Finn leans across the table, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Here’s the thing. If you want something to happen, you’re going to have to make the first move.”

“I’m not just going to—I don’t know, go up to him and kiss him,” Rey says, flinging up her arms in desperation. 

“That’s fine!” says Finn. “Let’s start slow, then. Maybe like… smile? Smiles are good. Especially for a guy like him.”

“Okay, that’s it, I can’t listen to this anymore,” Poe says indignantly, perhaps a little too loudly, and stands up. “I mean, what are you guys? Fifteen? I swear, there are too many fucking virgins on this fucking base.”

“Okay, Mr. Hotshot,” Finn shoots back, eyes flickering around the room as he lowers his voice to a sharp hiss. “First of all, there are no fucking virgins on this base, or anywhere; that’s an oxymoron. Second of all, how about you calm down, huh? Unless you somehow have a _problem_ with the two people who saved _all_ our asses.” 

They’ve made something of a scene now; the gentle hum of mealtime chatter has dropped a few decibels, and around the room necks are craning for a view of the suddenly-miffed Captain Dameron. Rey feels especially the hot, watchful burn of Ben’s gaze, feels her cheeks heat in response. But she looks down, picking at her food in silence.

Poe, exasperated, sits with a huff. “Listen, Rey,” he says, and she looks up, relieved that Ben appears to have turned his attention back to his mother. “We’re not talking about passing cutesy notes in Jedi class, okay? We’re all adults here. We gotta up the ante a little bit.” 

Her brows knit together. “What do you mean?”

“First thing’s first,” he begins, tilting his head and considering her. “You’ve got a great body, okay? Show it off a little more.”

Finn half-chokes on his food. 

Rey feels her skin burn. Something in the far reaches of her conscious sings in contentment at the compliment, but it’s lost in a flood of sudden discomfort. “What! No. Poe, come on,” she says, shaking her head in protest. “This isn’t… I don’t know. Coruscant.” 

Poe rolls his eyes. “I’m not saying you have to custom-order a whole new wardrobe. Just… tug down your shirt a little bit more. You know.” He reaches across the table, tugs at the twin bands of fabric that cross in an X over her chest.

Rey’s hands fly up to bat his away. “Stop that!” she hisses back. 

“I mean, that undershirt?” He shrugs. “Unnecessary.”

Finn narrows his eyes. “Actually, I change my mind. You can go.”

“I’m serious, buddy,” Poe counters. “Look. All Kylo over there—”

Rey scowls. “Ben.”

Poe draws in a long sigh. “All _Ben_ over there has to see is just a little—hey, just a _little_ more skin, and he’ll lose it. Trust me. He’s gotta just be brimming with pent-up sexual energy at this point.”

Rey steals another glance at Ben, who is pensively munching away at a bread roll. A curious, girlish thrill runs down her spine at the thought of him wanting her, as she wants him.  

—

The next day, Rey foregoes an undershirt ahead of her training session with Ben. Without it she feels oddly naked, and sorely regrets her choice of shirt: a grey, scratchy thing that pricks at the sensitive skin of her stomach. She arrives to the training wing before he does and stands in front of the mirror, studying herself, tugging down her neckline so that the curve of her breast peaks out from beneath the fabric.

“I know you wanted me to take a look at your saberstaff,” comes Ben’s voice, sudden and firm and almost urgent, from the door, “but I thought we could spar first. I need to let out… um. Some energy.” 

Rey whirls around, breathing quickly. “I do, too.”

Their eyes meet across the room, and they both sense it: something different, something curious and newly charged. Through the Force she summons a sparring sword from the wall, and he follows suit, gripping its hilt tightly in one white-knuckled hand. These sparring sessions have long outlived their usefulness, but neither of them has the heart to abandon them. There’s something comforting in the way they dance around each other, their blunted blades snapping against each other in some kind of song. 

Today this strange, fraught intensity surrounds them and penetrates them, pushes them into new molds of energy and aggression. Before long their bodies glisten with sweat, their breaths coming quickly in the warm, humming air between them. Ben especially moves with a new and terrific urgency, as if something inside of him is burning, clawing desperately to get out.  

At last he backs her against the wall, her blade caught in the hilt of his sword. She presses valiantly against him, but the thick musculature of his arms is rippling with the force of his exertion, and there is a fierce determination flaring in his face and through the bond, and she feels her grip relaxing as his eyes bore into hers, twin gems of melted amber—

“Yield!” she gasps, and he does, dropping the sword immediately. His momentum carries him forward, and he collapses against the wall with one arm extended, half-pinning her.    

His breath catches and his eyes drop, lingering on the heave of her breast. “I—”

Emboldened, she arches her back. The movement tugs her neckline into a deeper v, and Ben, transfixed, wets his lips with his tongue. 

The bond quivers with anxious anticipation.

“The saberstaff,” he mumbles at last, pushing himself off of the wall and pivoting sharply. “You wanted me to look at it?”

Rey hisses a low sigh of frustration through her teeth. 

—

“Well?” Poe says expectantly at dinner. 

“Almost.”

“What do you mean, almost?” He sighs. “We are not in the business of _almost_.”

“We had a… a moment. During training. I was against the wall, um, because his sparring sword was locked with mine. And he was leaning over me — winning, really — and when he yielded he dropped the sword and fell against the wall… and looked down.” She coughs nervously into her fist. “I felt really exposed, to be honest, and he was staring—”

“That was your chance,” Poe sighs, and throws up his arms in desperate exasperation. “I mean, it was right there. Should've just kissed the poor guy.”

“No!” she protests, piqued. “And keep your voice down! I told you. I don’t know if he has, you know, _those_ kinds of feelings for me.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious that he does,” Finn interjects, fork raised. “I mean, he, like, _ogles_ you. All the time.”

Rose appears over his shoulder, eyebrows quirked in questioning as she sits beside him. Rey, suddenly grateful for another woman’s company, nearly sighs aloud with relief. “Who’s ogling Rey?”

“Ben.”

“Oh.” Rose laughs. “Yeah, he’s desperately in love with you.”

Finn turns a triumphant grin on Rey, who tries in vain to hide her blush behind her fists. “See?” 

“Okay, everyone just slow down for a second,” Poe says, his tone rising. “I happen to like the little Operation Seduction we’ve got going here. You know what, Rey? If you’re unsure of his feelings—”

“Wait,” Rose interjects. “I thought you two had — what’s it called? — a Force bond. Can’t you just… read his mind? I don’t know if the Force works like that, but…”

“Boring!” Poe says loudly. “Way too easy. Leave the Force out of this.” He turns to Rey, still shocked into silence, and says, with one finger raised as if in accusation: “You need to touch this boy. He is touch-starved, okay? You need to get your hands on him. Get your body pressed up nice and tight against his.”

Finn scoffs. “Poe, for the love of—”

“And this is perfect,” Poe continues, unabashed, “because you do this very physical training with him every day. Find more excuses to touch him.” Suddenly his eyes gleam, and his voice drops to an excited whisper: “Wait, even better — oh boy, this is too good — get him to help you with your grip on a lightsaber.”

“This conversation is bordering on the obscene,” Finn interjects. “I’m going to have to ask you to stop.”

“I think it’s great,” Rose says. “Poe, please continue.”

“Oh, believe me, I could. But I think I’ve made my point.” He waggles his eyebrows. “Have I made my point, Rey?”

Her stomach flips, and she responds, in a higher-pitched voice than she’d like, “I think so.”

—

Ben is reserved in their session the next morning. “I took a look at your saberstaff,” he says, apparently determined not to look her in the eye; his gaze shifts and flits across a point just beyond her shoulder. “It’s a problem with the wiring, not the crystal. We can work on it later. In the meantime, Luke wanted you to have this one.”

Upon his return Ben had reclaimed the legacy saber, leaving Rey to construct a saberstaff of her own. It had felt right and powerful in her hands, and she’d wielded it famously — until a small explosion in the armory had torched its wiring. Luke and Ben had both chastised her for leaving it there. “A lightsaber is not a common weapon to be kept with blasters and the like,” Luke had said, his tone fatherly and admonishing. “It’s a far more elegant weapon.”

“For a more civilized age,” Ben had finished, and the two had shared a strange, knowing look.

The weapon he gives her now evokes a distant memory, calls forth something dark and familiar from the reaches of her mind.

“It’s mine,” he says quietly. “I… fixed it, of course.”

“Oh, Ben,” she whispers, turning it over in her hand. She’d held it once before, a long time ago, in a throne room now blasted to dust. “How did you do it?”

“It took a while. A lot of reading. And help from my uncle.”

When she looks up, her eyes finding his in the wash of morning sunlight, she’s suffused with a sudden and powerful urge to kiss him — not in the passionate, desperate way she’s allowed herself to dream of, but tenderly, quietly, slowly, as if to make him feel her pride, her admiration, her faith; as if they had all the time in the world. 

“It’s a little big,” she jokes lightly, flexing her fingers around the lightsaber’s hilt. 

He answers with a sheepish smile. “Built for my grip, obviously. I’m sorry.”

The saber weighs heavily in her hands, and Poe’s words ring close in her memory. With a steadying breath she begins, “I… it’s been a while since I held a single-bladed lightsaber. Could you show me? How to hold it?”

He frowns. “You just… hold it.”

Rey clears her throat. “I just… want to make sure that I’m getting the maximum power out of my grip. You always have such a powerful command of your saber.” This admission — for it feels like an admission, not a statement of fact — brings a blush to her cheeks. “I thought you could give me some pointers.”

His frown remains, the lines between his brows etched deeper now. “You don’t need pointers. You’re strong with the Force. Let it guide you.”

“Would you just show me how you grip your lightsaber, Ben?” she huffs, exasperated. 

At this he blinks dumbly and obeys, demonstrating how his fingers fan across and grip the saber’s hilt. “Like this.”

“Could you show me… on mine?” As he moves to take it from her, she adds, “With my hands.”

“With your hands?”

She blinks at him pointedly.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, Ben moves behind her, engulfing her petite frame with his strapping arms. Her heart is thundering a ferocious drumbeat against her sternum. “Left hand on the bottom,” he says, his voice low and rumbling now, his breath playing softly across the curve of her ear. “Make sure you grip with every other finger, not each one. Good.” 

Rey draws in a ragged, shallow breath. His hands dwarf hers on the saber’s hilt. 

“Now, right hand on top. You want a tight grip.”

As if to provoke him, she relaxes her fingers. 

“Tight,” he repeats, the snap of the _T_ sharp in her ear. His hand locks around hers, pressing her fingers into the hilt. “Good.”

For a moment they stay there, neither quite willing to move, as if they are hovering on some unknown precipice, and the dangerous thrill of it excites them both. At last, something coiled deep in her belly, something like instinct, compels her to roll her hips backward into his. 

A low groan rumbles in his throat, and then he flies away from her, the warmth and pressure of him suddenly gone. Rey grits her teeth, clenches her fists.

“There,” he says, nervously flicking his hair out of his eyes. The bond ripples.  “Nothing to it, really.”

“I—” But she falters, unsure, as he turns away from her. Every muscle and sinew in her body seems to twitch with frustration, and she very nearly drags him back, forces their bodies together. 

His head is hung as if in shame, and with a quick, low glance over his shoulder, he mumbles, “I need to go,” and swiftly quits the room.

—

Poe catches her in the hallway several hours later. “So,” he sing-songs, waggling his eyebrows. “How did this morning’s training session go?”

“It was okay.” She casts her eyes to the ground.

Poe sighs. “What happened?”

“Well, I tried the lightsaber grip thing and I — I, um. Our bodies were…” She raises her hands, presses them flush against each other. “I tried to move. To see how he would react.”

“Move?” Poe grins. “Like this?” To Rey’s horror, he twists his hips in a gesture that even her young, untrained eyes know as obscene. 

“Please, Poe!” she hisses lowly, darting her eyes up and down the empty hallway. If anyone had the _slightest_ idea what he was referring to—

“Okay, okay. Anyway, what happened?”

“He ran away.”

Poe covers his face in his hands. “This is a disaster. He’s a bigger dumbass than I thought.” 

“Maybe he just _doesn’t_ have those feelings!” She hasn’t been able to shake the thought, and it weighs heavily against her heart. “I mean, I’ve said it from the beginning —”

Poe only shakes his head. “No. Trust me, he is head over heels. He’s just a dumbass.” Twisting his lips in a frown, he heaves a reluctant sigh. “It’s time to bring out the big guns.”

—

Later that night, Rey finds herself sprawled across Ben’s bed, dressed in a strange set of underthings Poe had called by some luscious, foreign word she’d never heard. “I’ll let the… uh… the ladies help you figure out how to put it on,” he’d said, and presented an elegant pink box to her without ceremony. 

“How did you get this?” she’d asked.

He’d only shaken his head. “Best not to ask.”

And so Rey had retreated to the women’s quarters, drunk on some heady cocktail of wonder and nerves, and been helped into the underwear by the ever-curious Rose and Jessika. Studying herself in the mirror, she’d been forced to admit that they made her body, all thin and sinewy from years of scavenging and running, look like a woman’s: inviting and soft and even pretty. 

Now, in his bed and so close to triumph, her nerves are flaring. The thought of Ben finding her like this, the thought of his reaction, the thought of his leaning down and kissing her and peeling these strange garments off of her body, one by one and agonizingly slowly, sends a strange rush of heat to the juncture of her thighs.

At last, and without ceremony, the door opens. Rey’s breath catches.

“Oh,” Ben gasps, freezing on the threshold, his gaze dragging up and down her body, locking on the quickly-dampening spot between her parted legs. “I’m—uh.” He’s almost shaking now, but he can’t tear his eyes away. “Maker. I, uh… I… I’m—”

And then, with a sudden burst of energy, he scampers out the door.

Rey scowls, props herself up with her elbows. Her eyes trail regretfully down her body, and she turns to hating the strange lace stretched taut across her breasts and hips.

“Wait,” Ben says suddenly, reappearing in the doorway, his face blazing fire-red. Rey’s heart lifts, and she strains toward him, sending a cautious note of invitation through the bond. “This is my room.”

“Yes,” she answers. Her blood roars.

“This is not—er, Finn’s room.”

“Why… why would it be Finn’s room?”

“Well,” he huffs, growing indignant, “because he and you are—you know.”

Rey tilts her head, confused. “Ben, I don’t—”

But before she can finish, he’s disappeared again, the door slammed sharply shut behind him. 

In a matter of moments, she understands. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_ , she thinks, and scrambles out of bed. Snatching her robe off his desk, she follows him out the door with an indignant huff.   

“Ben!” she shouts down the hallway.

His tall, inelegant figure turns slowly, his shoulders hunched in defeat, his face long with disappointment. Rey stalks toward him, brimming with purpose. 

“What?” he snaps when she’s standing opposite him, chest heaving and cheeks aflame.

“I was in _your_ room for a reason,” she whispers, peering up at him through her eyelashes. “I wanted _you_ to walk in that door and see me.”

Ben’s throat bobs. “See you like… that?” His eyes drop to the deep V of her robe.

“Yes, Ben.”

A beat of silence, and his mouth hangs open. She wants so badly to touch him, to be touched _by_ him. It’s enough to make her insides twist and a scream build in her throat. 

At last, tired of just how _blind_ he is, she lifts on her toes and covers his open mouth with hers.

The Force itself seems to sigh with relief.

His mouth is suddenly crushing against hers, his fingers quick and insistent as they trail up her arms, her neck, into the loose strands of her hair. Every inch of her flesh responds to him, burning and begging all at once. Her spine is laced down with bolts and tremors, her toes curl into the floor,  and beneath thin layers of lace and silk, her nipples pucker. 

“Rey,” he pants incredulously, “your—”

She starts tugging him backwards. “Your room.”

They stumble down the hallway, only vaguely aware of the giggling pair of junior officers they pass outside of his room. Ben manages, even in his haste, to kick the door open, and they stagger backwards against the bed. He falls first, she on top of him, and she straddles him proudly, tightening her thighs almost possessively around his hips. His face is flushed pink, his lips swollen from her kisses, and the ghost of a disbelieving smile hangs about his mouth.

“You idiot,” she sighs, unfastening the clasps of his shirt, dipping her head to trail a line of kisses across his jaw and throat. “It was you. Just you. Always you.”

“Rey,” he sighs dreamily, reaching for her chin and fixing it just above his. Kissing her, sweeping his tongue over the seam of her lips. Rolling on top of her, shrugging off his shirt, repeating her name, almost growling it this time: “Rey. _Rey_.”

“Did you think about this?” she gasps, as his hips settle over hers, cradled between her thighs.

“Force, Rey,” he groans, kissing her hungrily. “I thought about it all the time.”

Almost instinctively he grinds his hips against her, and they both gasp, startled at the sudden jolt of heat that hisses through their veins and suffuses the bond between them. Then he does it again. Again, and Rey half-sighs, “I think—ah!—I think you should take— _Ben!_ —these off.” She snaps the waistband of his pants impatiently against his skin.

Their clothes seem to disappear. Ben is vaguely intrigued by her underthings, but he’s more curious to explore her body naked and without them, and they quickly join his clothes on the floor. The long-awaited union of their bodies is a clumsy, inelegant thing, and he half-laughs, half-sighs into her neck as she flutters around him, whispering his name in short bursts of pain, then curiosity, then pleasure. 

Strange and new and awkward though the act is, there’s a rightness to it that stirs her soul — never more so than when he’s inside of her, the full comfort of his weight lain out across her body, and he stutters, his eyes liquid brown and alive: “I never thought—”

Rey's hand comes up to touch his cheek, tracing the jagged path of his scar. "That I could want you?" she returns, tensing around him. "That I could love you?" Now she rises from the pillow to kiss him softly, trails a hand up his back to fist in his hair. "I have for a long time," she murmurs against his mouth, her breath catching as he rocks into her. "I do now. And I always will."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short epilogue for you lovelies. I can't tell you how much all of your comments meant to me. <3
> 
> p.s. there is a very brief mention of reylo babies at the very end!

The next morning, as a blond stream of sunlight dances across their bed, Rey's eyes flutter open to find her cheek pressed to the warmth of Ben's chest, her arm slung up to his shoulder. The steady rhythm of his breathing ruffles her hair, and she smiles at the sensation. The tender joy that sings now in her heart reaches to a depth of emotion she'd never thought possible. It's a strange, foreign thing, so far from anything she's ever known in her life, and she almost struggles to accommodate it. 

But then it's not hers alone to bear. Through their bond, this miracle of the Force, she knows he feels it too. 

When Ben wakes, he blinks in surprise at the sight of her sprawled across his chest. “So,” he says, running his fingers lazily through her hair. “It wasn’t a dream.”

“No,” she returns, indulging him with a close-mouthed kiss. Again she feels a tender pulse of bliss, met with his in the Force. Then comes something like mischief, and she draws back, considering him, studying his still sleep-groggy eyes. “Did you dream about me, Ben Solo?”

He clears his throat. “Yes.”

Rey trails a hand down the broad, moon-white expanse of his chest. A thrill of possession, hot and long-awaited, curls up her spine. “I dreamt about you, too,” she whispers, as her hand trails lower and lower across his abdomen.

A dark fire lights in his eyes then, and with something like a growl he jolts up, taking her roughly in his arms and pinning her to the bed. Here there is no tender prelude, with feather-soft kisses and achingly slow caresses: just a frenzied dip of his fingers inside of her, testing her. “Soaking,” he breathes reverently into her neck, and her fingers claw into his shoulders when he rocks into her. As his hips set a fierce, possessive pace, Rey thinks her bones turn to liquid, and her sighs of pleasure match his.  

After, when their sated and sweat-sheened bodies are curled around each other, Rey whispers, still a little breathless, “We should go down for breakfast soon.”

“No,” he murmurs into the crook of her neck, tightening his arm in a vise around her. “I want to stay here all day.”

“But I’m hungry,” she protests feebly.

Through the bond Rey feels a sudden flush of shame, and his mind fills with the barren desertscape of Jakku. “Then we’ll go,” he says, kissing the nape of her neck and disentangling himself. “Of course.”

\--

Entering the mess hall together proves to be something of a mistake.

No sooner have the doors opened, revealing Rey of Jakku and Ben Solo arm-in-arm and grinning like teenagers, than an uproar erupts throughout the hall.

“Told you so,” comes one mechanic’s voice, and Rey traces it to find the man shaking his head almost helplessly to his breakfast company.  

Across the room a uniformed pilot stands, jabs a triumphant finger across the table at his friend, and shouts, “Hah! You owe me ten credits!” 

The hall is abuzz with like voices. 

“About kriffing time, huh?” 

“Oh, yeah. Just did it, too. Look at how big his pupils are.”

“What do you think happens in the Force when two people like them go at it? I could have  _sworn_ I felt a small earthquake last night - no, I swear!" 

At last Rey’s eyes fall to Poe, Finn, and Rose’s table. Rose is grinning so wide Rey half-worries for the muscle strain in her cheeks, and Finn gives her a silent, virtual fist bump across the room. Poe, triumphant, stands at his seat and opens his arms wide. “We-heh-heh-ell!” he sing-songs. “Look what we have here!”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Rey sighs, taking a seat and dragging a reluctant Ben down to sit with her. A furious blush stains both their cheeks. 

“Well? How was it?”

“Poe Dameron!” Rey hisses, as her face turns to fire. 

And then, to no one’s surprise greater than her own, Ben supplies, “It was fantastic.”

The table dissolves into such roaring laughter that Rey, so mortified she can hardly see straight, doesn’t notice the approach of General Leia Organa, who, when the fitful laughing subsides, looms over her son’s shoulder.

“General!” Poe’s heels clap together, and his hand flies to his brow in a rigid salute.

“At ease, Captain,” she sighs. At length her soft, knowing eyes turn on Rey, and she says, resting one motherly hand on the crown of her head, “You know, Rey, I’ve always wanted a daughter. For a while there I didn’t think my idiot son would get himself together in time to find someone, but I’m so glad he has. And I’m even more glad it’s you.”

Rey nearly chokes on her food. “I’m sorry—what?”

“Mother!” Ben hisses.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Leia gasps. “Did you not — oh, I thought he had asked you.”

“Asked me…?”

“To marry me,” Ben sighs. “I had a ring and everything, _Mother_ , and if you had just been a _little_ more observant you would have seen that she’s not wearing it—”

“I don’t need a ring,” she says suddenly, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and nuzzling her nose into his neck. “I don’t need you to ask me with flowers and poetry and pretty things.”

“But—”

Rey draws back, finds his eyes with hers. “I just need you.”

“Oh, Force,” comes Poe’s voice, distant and hazy, as if from some background. “What have I done? They’re never going to shut up about each other, are they?”  

“You know what?” Ben says, standing, keeping his eyes locked with Rey’s. “We’ll just have to see you guys for lunch.”

“Yeah,” she breathes, all too happy to allow herself to be led away. Already her body thrums with anticipation. “L—later.”

“Seriously, Poe,” says Finn, watching them go. “What have you done?”

“Yeah.” Poe sighs, drops with a huff into his seat. “They’re probably the two most powerful people in the galaxy, and now, instead of spending their time, I don’t know, training new Jedi, they’re just going to be fucking like animals.” 

“Well, on the bright side,” Rose volunteers, fork raised, “those should be some pretty powerful kids.”

Poe and Finn lock eyes across the table. “Oh, no,” they say at once. “The kids.”

 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cue episode x opening crawl?


End file.
